Archive: Year: 2016

[caption id="attachment_5634" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Election night, 2012[/caption]We are less than three weeks from Election Day. If you are someone who works in the civic arena, this day, which comes every two years, is part of your emotional and political DNA. You've experienced highs and lows on Election Day, some that maybe changed your life. It can be brutal and it can be joyous. Oddly, it is a day when our country often feels most divided—elections do that—and then somehow we collectively put the acrimony aside and come together, sort of. At least up until now.This election feels emotionally more intense than many in the past, and the personal stress is more widespread than it was during the primaries, when it...

Yesterday, someone firebombed the local campaign office of the North Carolina GOP in Orange County, leaving behind graffiti reading "Nazi Republicans get out of town or else" and a swastika spray-painted on an adjacent building. While Donald Trump was quick to blame "animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina" for the episode, a loose online network of liberals and progressives led by my friend David Weinberger, a research fellow at the Berkman Center, threw together a GoFundMe page to help pay for reopening the office.In a brief call to action, he wrote, "Until an investigation is undertaken, we cannot know who did this or why. No matter the result, this is not how Americans resolve their differences. We talk,...